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The ADVANCE, March 24, 2021/Page 10A
Tillery: Week Ten
By Sen. Blake Tillery
(R-Vidalia)
The Senate
has switched
gears this week,
tackling House
bills and ramp
ing up commit
tee meetings
in order to fin
ish legislation by March 31. We’re
down to only five legislative days,
and while we’ve accomplished a lot
up to this point, there’s still work
left to be done. The Fiscal Year 2022
(FY22) budget has consumed most
of my time, and the Senate is nearing
its final proposal, which I’ll be able to
provide an overview of shortly. Many
of your concerns are also still on the
table, including elections reform.
We’ve been doing our due diligence
to try and pass legislation that ad
dresses that, and other critical issues,
in the best possible way.
From the start of the legislative
session all the way up until Cross
over Day, the Senate has been craft
ing legislation that proposes changes
to the way we conduct our elections.
Our priority has been on restoring
integrity in these processes, and that
hasn’t changed as we shifted to House
bills. This week the Senate Ethics
Committee met almost every day to
hold hearings on House Bill 531, the
House’s version of a large and exten
sive elections reform package com
parable to our Senate Bill 241. While
some sections of the House bill are
similar to SB 241, several parts differ.
Similarities include setting limits on
portable polling places and requir
ing some kind of identity verifica
tion (like a driver’s license number)
when requesting an absentee ballot.
Some of the areas specific to HB 531
are adjusting the time period when
someone can request an absentee
ballot, establishing provisions for
when a precinct is experiencing long
wait times, and providing regulations
for where a ballot drop box must be
located. The Senate Ethics Commit
tee is expected to introduce a substi
tute that will most likely try to align
the two bills and that should be vot
ed on by the committee next week.
When the state reopened back
in the summer, one of the main con
cerns we had as a legislature was mak
ing sure our businesses were able to
withstand the financial hardships of
the pandemic and to also do it safely.
In response to that, we passed Senate
Bill 359 last year, the “Georgia COV-
ID-19 Pandemic Business and Safety
Act.” This bill kept local businesses
protected against liability claims
from people contracting COVID-19
on their premises, as long as it wasn’t
due to reckless behavior or malicious
intent. House Bill 112 extends the
timeline for the protections of this
bill up to June 2022. This makes sure
that our businesses can continue to
stay afloat and our economy stays
strong despite new and changing in
formation about the virus.
Georgia, as you know, is also
strongly committed to improving our
foster care system, and we are always
working to find ways we provide
more kids with a safe home. House
Bill 114 relates to that by increasing
the tax credit for people who adopt
a foster child from $2,000 to $6,000
for the first five years of fostering
and provides a $2,000 credit every
year after that until the child turns
18. Fostering and raising an adopted
child helps provide these kids with
a better life, but we also understand
the challenges it can bring. This bill
also makes smart financial sense be
cause, on top of providing a more
stable, loving environment for chil
dren, the tax credit is still less than
what the state pays to house our fos
ter children in state homes. It’s truly
an economic and societal win-win.
We’re grateful to everyone who made
the decision to support the children
in Georgia, and HB 114 provides
some financial ease to those helping
our adoption system succeed.
House Bills 593 and 511 are
other bills that relate to our state fi
nances. HB 593 gives a tax cut to
hardworking Georgians who have
Highlights
kept the state operating even in the
middle of the public health crisis, by
increasing the standard deduction
from $4,600 to $5,400 for single fil
ers, $3,000 to $3,550 for those mar
ried but filing separately, and from
$6,000 to $7,100 for those married
and filing jointly. HB 511 requires
truth in advertising among Georgia’s
fees by requiring the levied fee to go
to its dedicated source. For example,
Georgians pay a $1 scrap tire fee
when buying new tires. In the past
this fee could be redirected to the
state general fund. HB 511 requires
it be used for the Solid Waste Trust
Fund which supports the removal
of scrap tires. This bill also includes
the creation of the State Children’s
Trust Fund, which would take fees
collected on child support and force
them to be used for the Division of
Family and Children Services to help
them manage their systems. This bill
is about making sure our state’s funds
and dedicated fees are being used for
their designated purpose.
The Senate will convene for
three more legislative days next week
(Monday, Tuesday and Thursday)
with committee work days in-be
tween. Committees should be done
reviewing legislation by then, and
we’ll start to focus all of our efforts
on passing bills in Chamber. The
FY22 budget will also be presented,
and soon we’ll be able to finish our
constitutional responsibility of pass
ing a balanced budget. I look forward
to detailing to you the areas where
we were able to save and the pro
grams we were able to increase allo
cations to. If you have any questions
about the budget or our legislation
here, please reach out to my office.
Thank you for letting me serve you.
Sen. Blake Tillery serves as Chairman
of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
He represents the 19th Senate District,
which includes Appling, Jeff Davis, Long,
Montgomery, Telfair, Toombs, Treutlen,
Wayne, and Wheeler counties and a
portion of Liberty and Tattnall counties.
He can be reached by email at blake.
tillery@senate.ga.gov.
Crossword Puzzle
Solution, page 16A
CLUES ACROSS
1. Volcanic crater
5. Long times
10. Swedish rock group
14. Having the means to do
something
15. Rods or spindles
16. La Tar Pits, Hollywood
17. Missing soldiers
18. Measuring instrument
19. All of the components
considered individually
20. Play “ Irish Rose”
22. Gene
23. Barrels
24. London-based soccer team
27. Feline
30. Breed of sheep
31. Body part
32. Doctors’ group
35. One who follows the rules
37. Cigarette residue
38. Ancient Greek sophist
39. Polish yeast cakes
CLUES DOWN
1. Mother
2. Jewish calendar month
3. Jai , sport
4. Establish again
5. Swiss river
6. Racetrack wager
7. but goodie
8. Closeness
9. Soviet Socialist Republic
10. At right angles to a ship’s length
11. Women’s undergarments
12. Mountain stream
13. Expresses pleasure
21. Painful places on the body
23. Automobile
25. Scandinavian god of battle
26. Expresses surprise
27. Secret political clique
28. Yields manila hemp
29. River in central Italy
32. Brain injury science acronym
33. Mental illness.
40. Promotional materials
41. Pancakes made from buckwheat
flour
42. Completed perfectly
43. Photo
44. A peninsula in SW Asia
45. The common gibbon
46. Disfigure
47. Ribonucleic acid
48. Japanese honorific
49. Pieces of music
52. Expressed pleasure
55. Having ten
56. Type of sword
60. Humble request for help
61. Eating houses
63. Italian Seaport
64. Cain and
65. Measure the depth
66. U. of Miami’s mascot
67. Political outsiders
68. Greek sorceress
69. Body part
34. A person from Asia
36. Father
37. General’s assistant (abbr.)
38. Cooked or prepared in a
specified style
40. Large terrier
41. Hillsides
43. Golf score
44. Not or
46. Type of student
47. Flower cluster
49. Closes tightly
50. Saudi Arabian desert
51. Famed vaccine developer
52. Multi-function radar (abbr.)
53. Actress Jessica
54. Pay attention to
57. Beloved big screen pig
58. Clapton, musician
59. Take a chance
61. Cost per mille
62. Helps little firms
Guest
continued from page 6A
review, Congress rubber-
stamping a fraudulent
election. It had the bonus
of allowing a bogus
impeachment of President
Trump, kicking a man
already down as a giant
middle finger to Trump
and his millions of
supporters.
Cloward-Piven did not
begin with the Trump
Nitty
continued from page 6A
destroy the unborn child
she is carrying. But that
right certainly doesn’t
extend to the federal
government forcing
taxpayers to pay for it.
But it turns out that
Shalanda Young, who
could be representing the
president in the allocation
and administration of $5
trillion of taxpayer money,
doesn’t see it that way.
For most of his
political career, our
Catholic president has
supported the Hyde
Amendment. But
suddenly, in 2019, as he
aspired to win his party’s
presidential nomination,
Biden had a change of
heart.
“The President has
spoken in favor of
Congress ending the Hyde
Amendment,” wrote
Young, “as part of his
commitment to providing
comprehensive health
care for all women.
Further, eliminating the
Hyde Amendment is a
matter of economic and
racial justice because it
most significantly impacts
presidency but during
FDR’s New Deal, then
further codified in the
1960s when it was given a
name. This included
Medicare, Medicaid and
the Great Society welfare
programs. New
government agencies and
bureaucracies choked
innovation and economic
growth. Ill-conceived and
endless wars, expansion of
food stamps, Medicaid,
and other social welfare
Medicaid recipients, who
are low-income.”
In polling done by
Gallup in 2020, 47% said
abortion is morally wrong,
and 44% said it is morally
acceptable.
Somehow, our
potential new director of
OMB thinks being a poor
black woman means not
only having a right to
destroy your unborn child
but also having a right to
use other people’s money
to pay for it, even though
half of them think ab ortion
is morally wrong.
It’s also interesting to
note that the same Gallup
polling shows most of the
sympathy for abortion is
among high-income
Americans, not low-
income Americans.
Among those earning
less than $40,000 and
those earning $40,000 to
$99,999, 52% say abortion
is morally wrong. Among
those earning more than
$100,000, 33% say
abortion is morally wrong.
If any moral disparity
appears to jump out here,
it is the apparent
disproportional moral
tolerance among higher-
income Americans of a
horrible act that destroys
programs, resulted in
the majority of Americans
receiving government
benefits.
A crisis led to each of
these programs. Seniors
and the poor unable to
afford their medical care
gave us Medicare and
Medicaid. The
government, replacing
stay-at-home fathers,
created the welfare state. A
shortage of reliable
Democrat voters was
human life and takes place
overwhelmingly among
lower-income Americans,
a disproportionate
number of them black.
It is hard not to recall
the motivations of
eugenicist Planned
Parenthood founder
Margaret Sanger.
The Charlotte Lozier
Institute estimates that the
Hyde Amendment saves
60,000 unborn babies
each year.
If we are going to talk
about women’s health, and
economic and racial
justice, we should talk
about helping and
encouraging women to
take control of and
responsibility for their
lives. Health is about life,
not death.
I suggest that
President Biden reach
back into his Rolodex and
find a new nominee to run
the OMB. Someone
overseeing the dispersal of
$5 trillion of taxpayer
funds should have more
respect for life and
property than does
Shalanda Young..
Star Parker is president of
the Center for Urban Renewal
and Education and host of
the new weekly news talk
show "Cure America with
Star Parker."
rectified by opening our
borders to anyone,
providing them with free
benefits in exchange for
not biting, or voting
against, the hand that feeds
them.
Democrats offer
programs, unpopular and
unappealing to the
majority of Americans.
Cloward-Piven is how they
muscle their agenda
through. It is their only
strategy, accomplishing
through chaos, fear and
coercion what is
unreachable via the ballot
box. Bringing down the
current system provides an
opportunity to remake
American society into their
idealized version of Utopia,
which in reality is the
Soviet Union, Cuba, or
China, with a small ruling
class in charge and
everyone else subservient.
In other words, a real-
life Hunger
Games dystopian society.
Donald Trump was
simply a speed bump on
the Cloward-Piven
expressway. He was
supposed to blow up the
road to serfdom but instead
only slowed it down for a
few years. The deep state
won easily.
I wonder if Trump
even stood a chance. Did
he simply provide an
opportunity for the deep
state to test their new
strategies of weaponizing
the government against
political opponents and
rigging elections to the
point that they are
irrelevant?
Now we have rule, not
by our elected
representatives, but by a
senile old man, signing
elective orders put in front
of him, orders created by
his puppet-masters hiding
behind the curtains.
COVID restrictions
and lockdowns created
such economic carnage
that an entirely new
dependency class was
born. Add to that tens of
millions of illegal
immigrants, bringing
dependency as well as
potential health care
concerns and costs and
animosity toward the
country paying all their
bills, displacing American
workers already struggling
to regain their footing after
COVID.
Any resistance is met
with protests and riots.
Those who speak out may
be cancelled or worse. The
media simply parrots the
talking points of the ruling
class, acting like court
eunuchs for the ruling
establishment.
Massive income
redistribution via
government programs
with attacks on the First
and Second Amendments
make it impossible for the
people to push back, either
verbally or physically,
against a tyrannical
government, all to
supposedly end poverty by
making everyone poor and
calling it the middle class.
Universal income
doesn’t eliminate poverty,
it simply expands it, but
under a different name,
something trendy, like
equity. Putting dog poop
on a scoop of ice cream
and calling it an ice cream
sundae doesn’t make it so,
except in the eyes of the
government that defines
the acceptable terms.
You can be sure that
guaranteed annual income
will simply create a
subservient lower class,
eager to vote for their
paymasters each
November as long as they
keep dripping narcotic
dollars into their wallets,
not enough to climb the
economic ladder but
enough to keep them
satisfied.
The productive ones,
pulling on the economic
oars, will eventually tire
from their efforts and take
their guaranteed stipend
and let someone else row
the boat. Those in charge
will live lavishly as they did
in the capitol city of
the Hunger Games.
Chaos and confusion,
fear and uncertainty, in a
never-ending stream
courtesy of the
government, solved with
executive orders by the
same government designed
to “fix” the very problems
they created.
All of this is being
ushered in under the whip
of President Cloward and
Vice President Piven. And
it seems the entire ruling
class, regardless of political
party, has signed on.
Brian C. Joondeph,
M.D., is a physician and writer.
He is on sabbatical from
social media.
conserve • reduce • recycle
